


The Love of My Life

by orphan_account



Category: SPN
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:41:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29380083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Relationships: Dean/Cas
Kudos: 3





	The Love of My Life

_Someplace In San Fransisco, 1964_  
The stillness of the early San Francisco morning—warm, golden sunlight angling through the window, the quiet hum of the central air, and his first cup of coffee (black, one sugar) in his chipped SF Chronicle mug—is, truth be told, the only reason Castiel gets into the office before anyone else. Not that he’s clamoring to relieve anyone of the notion that he does it because he loves his job.  
He does, after all, or at least he supposes he does, perhaps. He helps people, he thinks, and there’s something to that. But if he’s honest it’s the peace and the silence that draws him out of bed and to his desk while most of his coworkers are still at home enjoying steak and eggs cooked for them by their doting wives. If Anna ever started in like that, he thinks, smiling to himself, he would know that it was high time to lock himself in Johnson’s bomb shelter that only they still regarded as a secret. That’s only, of course, if they let some pinko, left-winger like him within twenty yards of the thing. There’s a knock on his open door. 7:15, like clockwork. Meg stands in the hall, arms full with the early morning mail.  
“Come in,” he says, bracing himself with a sip from his mug.  
Not that Castiel can exactly call himself an expert on women’s fashion, but he’s fairly certain that in the rapidly cooling September weather, there’s no excuse for her neckline.  
“Mr. Novak,” she says, leaning over his desk as she sets down his letters, the cloying smell of her perfume all but choking him.  
“Miss Masters,” he says, looking her pointedly in the eye. “Always a pleasure.”  
“What does your wife say about you working such long hours?” Meg asks, her red lacquered lips curling into a smile.  
“Oh, I suspect she’s just glad that I’m out of her hair for ten hours a day.” Every day it’s the same thing, this game of cat and mouse, though Castiel’s not sure which one of them is which, and the thought makes him exceedingly uncomfortable. So he smiles politely.  
“Is that all, Miss Masters?”  
“I’ve told you before, angel. You can feel free to call me Meg." She raises one of her penciled eyebrows in what can only reasonably be construed as an invitation.  
“Fine then, Meg,” he says, taking another sip of coffee. “Would you be so kind as to close the door on your way out?”  
“Sure thing,” she says, the sweetness gone from her voice as the door snaps close behind her.  
Heaving a deep sigh, he reaches for the small stack teetering on the edge of his desk. He slides open the first envelope and reads.  
Dear Mr. Know-It-All,  
The gals and I wanted to take a trip to Atlantic City for a dear friend’s birthday, but my husband seems to be against the idea—  
He doesn’t need to read any further.  
This was not where he saw himself eight years ago when he’d graduated, freshly minted journalism degree in hand. He’d never pictured himself sitting behind a desk doling out the advice he never felt fit to give. He’d wanted to explore the world, take risks, get shot at trying to bring the truth to the people. And for a while, he had. Hell, he was the one who’d broken the story on Cuba four years ago. Front-page article and full credits, a one-inch headline, and a matching picture. He could have gone anywhere. The sky was the limit.  
But then he’d met Anna and everything he thought he’d wanted to be changed. He’d been on the docket to cover Asia--how Korea was holding up and the rumblings of trouble in Cambodia and Vietnam, his bags half-packed already when she’d entered his life like a whirlwind, and he knew, without even needing to ask her, that everything would be different. He knew that settling down meant trading his apartment for a house with a backyard and a garage where he could park that dream four-door.  
He knew that it meant trading in Asia for something with a desk and higher pay, but these hardly seemed like sacrifices. After all, he was getting to spend the rest of his life with the girl of his dreams, and all those things he was supposed to want were being handed to him on a silver plate. Who was he to question it?  
By the time he's finished replying to the first few letters (Hire a Repairman or Do It Yourself, Best Way to Cook a Meatloaf, and Hinting You Want the Ring), the office has begun to fill up in a mad dashing of copy editors and typists. Flying paper and people shouting themselves hoarse about their innumerable deadlines swirl past in a frenzy of activity like a small, tightly organized weather system outside his window. So he's surprised to see an outlier amongst them, a young man in a pair of faded Levi's and a black tee shirt being buffeted through the crowd. He's tall and tan and if his cocksure and slightly bow-legged gait is anything to go by, Castiel would stake his life on this guy being a photographer.  
He's got that look about him, the one that Castiel has always been sorely lacking, the one that has colleagues clapping you chummily on the shoulder while shaking your hand and shop girls and waitresses alike falling over themselves to blushingly serve you. Yes, Castiel thinks peevishly. This man is sure to have people everywhere stripping down for his dubious "art." And before he knows it, he has conjured up an entire lurid history for this man—involving no less than a brief stint in the pornography industry—without even knowing his name. Of course, he recognizes the ugly jealousy for what it is. But he is a writer after all (and he scoffs at the generously given title). Ten thirty in the morning and already he needs his second cup of coffee.  
Sighing, he hefts himself out of his desk, ratty mug in hand, and makes his way to the coffee girl for a fill-up, rooting around in his pockets for a quarter. Much to his dismay, there is someone already her cart leaning slouch shouldered across it. The girl's tinkling laugh sounds like breaking the glass to Castiel's agitated ears. Becky is nice if a bit dim, but that doesn't mean he necessarily enjoys spending any protracted amount of time in her company.  
"Oh, Dean," she says, excitedly. "Have you met Mr. Novak?"  
And because the universe seems eager to unleash ever fresher Hell on him this morning, of course, the man who turns around, this Dean character, is Castiel's new, imagined arch-nemesis. At least he wasn't wrong in his assumption about the waitresses.  
"Dean Winchester," says the man, sticking out a hand with bitten down fingernails. "I'm the new guy." He's taller than Castiel, and broader, with a spray of freckles across his face and eyes the color of beach glass.  
When Castiel doesn't move, he begins to pull his hand away, so Castiel grasps it in his own, finally remembering himself. Enemy or not, he won't lose the high ground by acting like an ass.  
"Castiel Novak," he says, giving the proffered hand a firm shake. It's rough and callused and warm, and it's incredibly stupid that Castiel should even notice.  
"Castiel, huh?" says Dean. "Is that—"  
"My parents were Southern Pentecostal." He hates the way Dean's mouth tugs up at just one corner. Smug prick.  
"You get that a lot, I take it?" he says. Becky laughs, the traitor.  
"Yes," says Castiel giving him a tight smile. "Sorry do you mind if I just..." He points to Becky who looks at him a little moony-eyed.  
"Sure. Sorry, chief," says Dean, sidestepping him and picking a leather camera bag up off the floor. Castiel gives himself a petty little congratulatory smile on his undimmed skills of observation. "Guess I'll see you around."  
Becky positively scowls at him as Castiel steps forward to hand her his mug. It’s returned to him full of decaf.  
He counts his blessings at not seeing Dean the rest of the day, instead of retreating to his office, door firmly shut. His fingers feel funny as they begin to type, something ineffable and huge that fades under the gentle resistance of the keys. It's not just the noise of the Selectric’s clacking gears or the tangy smell of ink or even the repetition of the motion, the click slide shift.  
When he'd agreed to take up this position, he'd made sure to ask for a few things; a standing column in the Sunday Metro, a featured op-ed in the Tuesday edition, total anonymity on the schlock that was “Mr. Know-It-All.” It’s a far cry from the life he had expected, but as long as he keeps his head down, nose to the grindstone, producing inch after inch until God knows when it’s easier to believe that he’s happy.  
When Castiel arrives home that evening, it’s to find Anna with papers fanned out on the kitchen table. The dim light in the kitchen means she’s been sat here for hours, so caught up in what she was doing that the thought of turning on the lights probably never crossed her mind. Quietly as he can, he deposits his briefcase by the door and sneaks up behind her, dropping a hand onto her shoulder. She nearly jumps out of her skin.  
“Hi,” he says, as she rounds on him with a scowl.  
“What time is it?” Anna asks, peering around in the half-light of the kitchen, the purple and orange glow of the sky outside the window.  
“Seven-thirty.”  
“Already? Oh, for heaven’s sake…” she says, making a move to gather up the clutter on the table, but Castiel forestalls her, wrapping his fingers lightly around one of her fine-boned wrists.  
“Don’t worry about it,” says Castiel, smiling. “Tell me what you’re working on.”  
As it would happen, it’s a petition, not the first Anna’s brought home from her book club, which Castiel suspects talks about everything except for books. But this one she’s drafting herself, accumulating research, and compiling into coherency. It’s about helping to strengthen Title VII laws to help women in the workplace. It’s revolutionary! she explains.  
Castiel watches her speak, watches the way that her eyes light up as she tells him about her idea to start some sort of lobbying firm that would deal with just this sort of thing, the way her hands move with excitement as she describes it all, and he thinks she’s at her most beautiful when she’s riled up about something.  
When they’d first met, it had been in college during a lecture on political theory, and she’d been the only woman in the class. She wasn’t like the other girls though. She was fierce and outspoken and had the balls to argue with their troglodyte of a professor. He’d never properly loved a woman until her, and sometimes he’s still not sure whether or not he’s doing it right.  
“How about you?” she asks finally. “Anything exciting happening at the office?”  
He considers for half a second telling her about Dean, about how this asshole rode in like he owned the place, and how isn’t that just typical photographer bullshit? (It isn’t, of course, but she would take his side if he insisted it was true.) But something stops his tongue. She doesn’t really need to know the details; it’s not that important, or at least not nearly as important as what she had to say. Keeping his dislike to himself is one thing, but complaining out loud about this man he’s only known for approximately eight hours would be beyond childish.  
So instead he says, “Nothing much. Just some new staff.” And he leaves it at that.  
Later that night when they make love she looks him in the eye like she means it. He stares into them and is struck sideways by the notion that they are green like Dean’s and that’s when he loses himself, imagining that instead of a pale expanse of creamy skin, he can see a constellation of golden freckles mapped out beneath his fingertips. He comes hard, his body wracked with little shivers of pleasure. The first twist of surprise and hot prickly guilt doesn’t begin to bleed from his skin until he’s come down, staring boneless and breathless into the moonlit blue of the ceiling above.  
He feels backward and inside out and uncomfortable because there’s never once been a time with Anna where some third party has insinuated itself in their thrall. With others, sure, this sort of mindless meandering to a dark place within his head is nothing new. It’s just he’s been so good at avoiding it, so good at not investigating where that dark place led, that its appearance now is like a kick to the gut reminding him that it’s always going to be there, that it’s never going to quit.  
He’s tired as hell in brain and body, but the prickly nerves that have taken root inside him keep him up and alert, listening to Anna’s deep and steady breathing. Sleep doesn’t come easy when it does come and his alarm clock mocks him awake on the other side of night.  
In only a fortnight, he has concluded that there's just something about Dean, some indefinable abstraction that sets Castiel's teeth on edge. The thing of it is, Dean himself, never mind the Dean in Castiel’s head, has done absolutely nothing to warrant this level of loathing. In fact, he's so goddamn charming that by the end of his first week there, he's got all of the women and at least half the men eating out of the palm of his hand.  
They drink together nights at Harvelle's, pal around, and have a smoke while Castiel either sits alone at the bar drinking his scotch on the rocks or simply goes straight home because he's perfectly capable of having fun on his own without needing to pander to the in-crowd. Or at least that's what he tells himself in between all the times he thinks he might just be cutting his nose off to spite his face.  
It could be pity or amusement or genuine interest, but it’s sometime in early October when Dean plants himself on the edge of Castiel's desk, a cigarette pinched between the second and third fingers of one hand and a ceramic coffee mug in the other.  
"Did I do something to offend you?" he asks, flicking ash away into the mug.  
"What?" Castiel replies stupidly, looking up blearily from another of his innumerable letters (What to do when two friends are fighting, and how to get out of the middle).  
"Seems to me like you've had a problem with me from the jump. So I wanna know if I offended you or if you're always this much of a prick to everyone." He takes another long pull off his cigarette, exhaling through his nose.  
"I..." Castiel begins, not really having the faintest idea what to say. Frankly, Dean hasn't done a damn thing, but somewhere at the back of Castiel's brain, there's a little niggling voice that sounds suspiciously like his mother telling him that Dean is not so much a man as he is an agent of the devil. It's idiotic, really and truly, because he hasn't even set foot in a church since his California transplantation and she's been dead for years now.  
But still, there's that ever-present twisty feeling in his guts that he's worked so hard to ignore, and standing next to Dean makes his will power shrink down past zero. Dean is giving him an expectant look through the burgeoning haze above his desk.  
"Sorry," Castiel says finally, because it’s not Dean’s fault, not really. It’s Castiel’s own weakness that’s got him so riled up. And as apologies go it's admittedly piss poor, but Dean seems satisfied enough that he stubs out the rest of his cigarette in the bottom of the mug with a wet hiss.  
"Good," he says. "Let's go. I know a place in Chinatown that does the best Philly cheesesteak you're ever gonna eat outside of Philly. I'll drive."  
He doesn't know what it is that compels him to do it. Maybe it’s curiosity or maybe it’s spite for all the parts of him saying no, but Castiel gets up, puts on his coat, and follows, leaving his work and his briefcase behind, forgotten.  
Drive, as it happens, is a somewhat generous description of what Dean does. His only mode of transportation is an Indian Chief Roadmaster that leans nonchalantly against its kickstand in the parking lot. Its dark ebony paint and winking metallic fixtures make a valiant attempt to glint seductively in the grey light that penetrates the low cover of clouds, but all the same, Castiel can feel his heart migrate oddly from his chest up to the top of his head before plummeting to rest somewhere in the region of his feet. Getting shot at for work would be a noble risk; willingly setting foot on the back of a hunk of metal traveling at ninety miles per hour is just stupidity.  
"You're joking," says Castiel, casting the bike a suspicious look.  
"You're playing a dangerous game, buddy, insulting a man's wheels like that." And Dean actually sounds a little offended. "Nah, baby, don't listen to him. You're a beauty," says Dean a little cow-eyed, running a reverent hand across the leather seat in a way that makes the hair at the back of Castiel's neck stand on end. "Nineteen forty-seven edition. Belonged to my dad, but I fixed her up. Good as new."  
"That's all well and good," says Castiel hanging ten paces back. "But it doesn't mean I'm going to get on it."  
"Aw, c'mon," says Dean. "Where's that sense of adventure? The cable car's gonna be packed at this hour. I'm offering you a free ride, man." When Castiel doesn't budge, he continues. "Swear to God, I won't let you die. Not on my watch, anyhow. I mean, shit, you just started talking to me. It'd be pretty terrible thanks."  
He's got a stupid little helmet in his hands, and, Jesus, this must just be a day of bad decisions, because Castiel steps forward and takes it, rolling his eyes at what a chump he's turned into. But why not? There's a foreign thrill that curls its way into his hands as he straps the helmet in place, and he finds the sense of danger feels distinctly good, never mind his nerves. It feels kind of fun, and it occurs to him that he can't remember the last time he used that adjective to describe himself.  
"’Atta boy," says Dean throwing his leg across the bike's girth, and Castiel slowly follows suit. He fumbles with his hands for a moment, before Dean grabs them both, pulling Castiel forward and setting them on his own hips. "Don't be shy," he says. "Gotta hang on tight." He guns the engine. The throaty growl of the motor revving to life sends tremors down the length of the bike and up Castiel's legs.  
They peel out of the lot at a cool forty-five, the chilly autumn air making Castiel's eyes water and whipping through the tails of his coat, sending it parachuting out behind him, but he finds that with the way he's pressed flush against the leather of Dean's jacket-clad back, his fingers gripped tight around the spurs of his hips, that he barely feels the cold at all.  
It doesn’t take him long to acclimate to the openness of zipping around on the bike, not nearly as long as he thought it would. In fact, in many ways, it’s not unlike a dance. When Dean leans forward to accelerate up hills, Castiel leans forward with him, willing the motorcycle to reach the peaks, her engine rumbling in straining protest.  
When Dean angles into curves, the side of his boot inching dangerously toward the ground, Castiel has no choice but to follow. And after awhile being led through the streets of his city whiplash fast, he’s a little disappointed when they finally stop, pulling up to a narrow brick building in the rising twilight. His hands shake a little as he dismounts, and it’s no wonder Dean’s got those long, bowed legs despite his narrow hips. He only realizes he’s staring when a man walking by shoots him a questioning glance from under the brim of his hat, and Castiel quickly marches inside.  
The place is a shit hole. Even by Chinatown’s lousy standards, it's a shit hole, and that's saying something. His feet stick to the floor and the odor of hot grease lingers uncomfortably at the back of his palate, seeping forever into the fabric of his clothes  
“This place?” he asks, feeling a lethal clot already threatening to form in his aorta.  
“You’re a godly man, right? What’s that they say about ‘O, ye of little faith?’” says Dean, stepping up to the counter. “My treat.” He slaps down a bill with a salute to a squat Oriental man bent over a fryer. The man, to absolutely no one’s surprise, salutes back.  
“I’m not…” What? Religious? Castiel has no idea what he wants to say, why he thinks saying anything to Dean is important at all, but something is unnerving about the way he’s completely tongue-tied.  
The sandwiches appear not moments later, leaving the paper wrapped around them all but translucent as Dean and Castiel make their way back outside to lean shoulder to shoulder against the narrow strip of brick. He could say that they’re standing so close because of the wind that whips up the street. He could, but he’d be lying. Wind or no wind they’ve both got coats, and there’s not really any good reason for them to be huddled together. Dean’s arm brushes his as he takes his first humongous bite, eyelids fluttering closed.  
“You waiting for a written invitation?” he asks, swallowing thickly. “Dig in, partner.”  
Castiel stares down at the concoction dripping disgustingly into the palms of his hands. Meat and orange cheese glisten in the reflected streetlight throwing off a toxic rainbow sheen, but as he takes his first hesitant bite he thinks he might just collapse buckle-kneed onto the pavement. God damn it, but Dean was right.  
"Mmmm," is all he manages around a mouthful of steak and boiling cheese.  
"Right?" Dean says with a smirk.  
“I’ve likely shaved several years off my life,” says Castiel as the first bite hits his stomach like a rock. “But I’m finding I don’t care.”  
“Told you.”  
"How the hell did you even find this place?" says Castiel, wiping his chin.  
"First thing you gotta do in a new town." Dean balls up the wrapper of his sandwich with a shrug. "Find all the good joints to get a decent meal."  
"Yeah but decent or not, a cheesesteak sandwich in Chinatown? It seems a little out of the way."  
"All the best places are." And he winks. The stupid shit actually winks.  
Castiel feels his face splitting into a grin against his will, ignoring the way cheese and grease ooze scorching onto his fingers. "You sound like you know what you're talking about."  
Dean just lifts an eyebrow and gives him a little half-shrug. "Moved around a lot," he says, but somehow even with this new piece of information, Castiel can’t shake the odd feeling that he somehow knows even less, like Dean’s determined to remain some half-baked mystery that itches at the back of Castiel’s brain.  
That’s how it starts, with these strange little excursions a couple of times a week to hole in the wall spots all over town. A burger joint in Buena Vista, a fried fish place in the Castro, and even a soda fountain near Miraloma Park where they both get double-decker cones and watch the kids out on the playground screaming and laughing at each other in the mid-autumn chill. Each time, he calls Anna from the office, lets her know that he’ll be home late, so don’t bother holding up dinner, and each time she seems distinct not to mind, fond even of the fact that he’s got people he’s willing to pal around with who don’t share his last name.  
She’s always got somewhere to be anyway, screenings of films, and book club meetings, and he’s not quite sure what that says about either of them, that they can give each other up so easily, but he figures it’s best not to dwell. No, better to focus on things like the concentration Dean gives the dripping chocolate scoop on his cone or the way his hands grip around the throttle of the bike.  
When they ride on the Indian now, Castiel is not quite so scared to wrap his arms around Dean’s waist, though he can still feel the heat that pools low in his belly. Sometimes, Dean skids his fingers briefly across Castiel’s hand, under the cuff of his shirt and onto his wrist; it’s brief, yes, but not without intent.  
Castiel tells himself it’s just an accidental brush of skin, that surely he’s the only one reading something deeper into it, but when he loses count of the number of times it happens, the argument he clings to in his head becomes, admittedly, shaky at best. And that’s all the more dangerous. They never talk about it, because, honestly, what’s there to say? Some things are just better left read in the Braille of rough fingers.  
Except it's one thing for the pair of them to casually liaise in neutral places with things like food to distract them. At least out there, despite the ever-prying eyes, Castiel feels like he’s got some semblance of control over the situation, can escape the metaphorical kitchen if it ever gets too hot, so to speak.  
It’s an entirely different thing, however, when after an arduous day hunched over his desk to the point of a stiff neck and what can only be the early development of carpal tunnel syndrome, Dean suggests a beer at his place instead of their usual artery-clogging, epicurean adventures. He’s rumpled and stooped under the weight of his bag, but he has that tired half-smile on his face that makes Castiel all at once want to smile back and punch his lights out.  
“Are you sure you’re not hungry?” Castiel asks as a means of deflection more than anything else, Dean’s Nietzschean pit of a stomach notwithstanding.  
“Honestly, man?” says Dean, scratching at the back of his head inelegantly. “I’m beaten. A little liquid dinner never hurt anyone, right?”  
“I guess,” says Castiel, not really sure at all. “Sure.”  
And even though he collects his things and follows Dean down to the parking lot, he’s fairly certain that this is what the eponymous they mean about jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.  
Dean’s apartment is truly a sight to behold. It’s small, and as Castiel steps inside, he can’t quite shake the feeling like he’s walking into a cave. Yet for all its smallness, it feels much homier than most of the houses Castiel has ever lived in. None of the furniture really matches—a lumpy beige couch made of a soft-looking canvas, a decrepit leather armchair with clawed feet, and a squat wooden coffee table riddled with pockmarks, scuffs, and a few deep gouges—and it looks like Dean more than likely came by most of it in second-hand stores or else rescued it from myriad yard sales (and he probably had, the cheap bastard, Castiel thinks).  
A large bookshelf stretches across one wall, stacked high with paperbacks and archival boxes in the kind of controlled chaos that takes years of mastery. Shoved haphazardly into one of the bigger nooks is a small television set, its antennae pointing outwards into the room. Pushed up against the back wall next to the window is a large brass bed, tarnished beyond repair, swathed in a thick blue comforter. And within arm’s reach, Castiel’s not surprised, a turntable lies open, a record in place.  
“Ain’t much,” Dean says, moving past Castiel to flip on the television and sink into the sofa. “But I’ve got everything I need within ten paces. Can’t beat that.”  
"No," says Castiel, watching Dean toe off his boots with a grunt. "You certainly can't." He hovers by the door, coat still draped over his shoulders, scuffing at the floor with the side of his shoe. The sudden hesitancy that wells up inside him makes him want so badly to turn tail and run. It was a terrible idea coming here, invading this weird little private space and filling it with his presence.  
He feels like he's an intruder peeping in on some private moment not meant for his or anyone else's eyes, ignoring the little voice of reason that tells him that Dean was the one who invited him here in the first place. He's just about to leave, exit line already half-formed in his head (sorry, gotta get home to Anna, it's pot roast tonight), when Dean speaks from the sofa.  
"Take your coat off and stay awhile. You're making me nervous just hovering."  
"Sorry," says Castiel, and, against his better judgment, throws his coat over a chair that's set up around a card table in the little kitchenette.  
"You can help yourself to a beer if you want," says Dean hefting a stack of proofs and a wax pencil off the coffee table and setting them down on his lap. "And grab one for me too while you're in there."  
"Sure." Castiel almost laughs thinking what his mother would say about a host making his guest do all the work but finds he quite likes this familiarity, this not having to put on airs. It's pretty fucking refreshing, actually.  
The refrigerator, as expected, is at least five years old, a terrible shade of yellow that no self-respecting bachelor would ever allow in his apartment, and Castiel has a strong suspicion that it came with the place. Taped to the outside though is a small crinkled photo of a family: a man in his Marine Corps uniform, a pretty, smiling blonde woman holding a pudgy infant who appears to be more blanket than a child, and a small blonde boy in short pants with an explosion of freckles across his face.  
They stand in front of a small ranch style house with a neatly clipped lawn, or, more accurately, the man and the woman stand, while the baby snoozes and the little boy stoops down to inspect something in the grass.  
"Who's this?" Castiel asks.  
"Who's who?" Dean says around the pencil now clenched between his teeth.  
"On the fridge."  
"Oh. Uh...it's me and, uh, my family." Dean removes the pencil from his mouth, scratching his nose with the blunt end and staring down at the test sheet in his hands.  
Castiel wonders at the hesitation but continues. Call it a fault or possibly just that persistent journalistic spirit within him, but he's always been spectacularly bad at knowing when to quit when he's curious, knowing he's lucky as hell he hasn't gone the way of the proverbial cat. "So the baby?"  
"My little brother, Sam. He’s four years younger than me.” His voice goes a little tender as he speaks, mismatching spectacularly with the rigidity of his shoulders.  
Castiel says nothing, just makes a little hmm noise at the back of his throat. When after a few moments, Dean is no more forthcoming, he asks, “So what does he do?”  
“He’s a big hotshot lawyer down in Los Angeles. Just started at his first firm. Got a wife too. Cute, little, blonde thing. Jessica.”  
“You must be proud,” says Castiel touching one of the battered corners of the photograph.  
“Yeah. Yeah, he’s doing really good, Sammy. Says he’s really liking the people there and the work. He was always a smart kid though, so.” Dean shrugs around something that sounds almost like remorse.  
“Your parents must be proud of him too,” says Castiel, eyes skipping once again over the man with the deep-set, purposeful stare and the woman with the kind smile.  
“Come on, man,” says Dean, finally twisting around to look at him. “Enough with the twenty questions. Weren’t you getting us that beer?" He chuckles a little as he speaks, but the edge of warning in his tone makes it so clear that the topic is no longer open for discussion that even Castiel can't miss it. Another story for another time, he thinks.  
He's surprised to find that the inside of the fridge, unlike the rest of the apartment, is almost entirely barren, save for a bottle of mustard, a six-pack of Shiner, and a bag of Wonderbread, and he's genuinely curious how Dean hasn't contracted scurvy yet. But this strange thing between them, whatever it is, is still so new, standing on shaky fawn legs, so he says nothing. They might not be ready for making fun yet.  
Grabbing two beers off the shelf, he pads as quietly as possible back to where Dean sits, now with a magnifying glass pressed into his eye, studying a photograph of a young woman in a cowgirl outfit twirling a baton. He extends his hand, not looking up at Castiel just yet.  
"What do you think of this?" he asks suddenly, and Castiel holds back a cough as some of his beer goes down the wrong pipe. Dean thrusts the photo of the girl at him, her teeth like Chiclets as she smiles blankly up at him.  
"I'm no expert," says Castiel, but when he tries to give the photo back to Dean, he's stopped, gentle fingers pushing his hand away.  
"That's why I want your opinion."  
Castiel stares back at the photograph, attempting to the best of his ability to divine something from it other than a vacant-eyed bottle blonde, but he comes up short.  
"It's nice," he says and instantly knows it's the wrong thing, as Dean tugs the print away from him with a frown. He tosses it and the pencil onto the table, shaking out his shoulders and neck, and Castiel has a sudden hysterical notion that he'd very much like to touch the muscles that pull there, feel the way they shift and slide beneath his fingertips, or maybe his lips.  
The notion sends a little thrill of something all at once horrible and wonderful ping-ponging around his ribcage, and he begins to think that maybe this beer wasn't the smartest idea he's ever had. Not by a long shot. And what the fuck do the two of them even have to talk about anyway? Everything Castiel wants to say either sounds too much like an intrusion or too much like a come on. At this point, he's not even sure which of those two is the less preferable option.  
But just like that, Dean saves him the trouble. He reaches into the pocket of his flannel shirt, withdrawing a battered pack of cigarettes. He taps one loose, hanging it between his lips as he fishes in his jacket pocket to pull out his beat-up, silver lighter, the initials J.W. etched neatly into the side.  
"Surgeon General says that that things'll kill you," Castiel says casually, taking another careful sip from his beer.  
"And a piano could fall on my head tomorrow," says Dean, snapping the lighter shut with a click. "We all end up in the dirt one way or another." He wordlessly hands the pack to Castiel.  
He hasn't had a smoke in years, not since meeting Anna, and the warm, familiar scent of Lucky Strike beckons him like an old friend. "To living in the moment," he says, as Dean offers him a cigarette.  
“Don’t want to die without one last smoke,” says Dean, his lips turning just slightly up toward his freckled cheeks. He holds up the lighter, flicking it back to life as Castiel leans in. Dean cups his hand around the flame, and the tips of Dean’s fingers just barely brush the side of Castiel’s face in a move that could be accidental, but that he rather thinks is not. He wants so badly to lean into the heat of that calloused hand, but his last scrap of self-control stops him, and he leans back into the welcoming embrace of the lumpy sofa, taking a long pull from his cigarette.  
Castiel feels himself unfurling under the hiss of burning paper and the slow drags of tobacco down his throat that settles hot in his lungs. "I've got brothers too," says Castiel through an exhalation of smoke that obscures his face.  
“Well,” says Dean, giving him a smile that feels like a stab in the chest. “Ain’t that something?”  
It takes him a little longer than usual to get home. It’s not that he’s dreading it per se, it’s just that something feels like it was left behind at Dean’s place, something big and something important.  
But the feeling vanishes when he comes through the door, and Anna is there to wrap him in a tethering hug.  
"Darling, what on Earth is that smell?" Anna asks as she presses a gentle kiss to his cheek.  
Castiel pulls back and is grateful for the idle task of hanging his coat in the closet to keep him from looking her in the eye. "I stopped at Harvelle's on the way home," he says too easily. "You know how smoky it gets in there sometimes." He honestly has no idea why he lies or why the words seem to spill from his lips as smooth as the smoke had done. He wishes he could swallow them back down.  
It's ridiculous, he knows. It was just a damn cigarette for Christ's sake. And yet for some hair-brained reason, even with the buzz of the nicotine slipping away, the remembrance of it prickles just under his skin, one part the thrill of it, and two parts guilt. The worst part is that this total exclusion of Dean from his conversations with her is becoming something of a habit that he can’t quite seem to shake.  
"Alright," says Anna, giving him a scrutinizing look that makes his collar feel a little tight. "But do me a favor and change before dinner. That smell is atrocious."  
"Yes, dear," he says, relieved to find that the smile he gives her is nothing short of genuine, and it widens as she scowls at him, rolling her eyes. He watches the way the light plays off her hair when she turns to leave.  
Sometime around Thanksgiving, he and Dean are paired up to work a story together. It’s just some fluff piece and both of them know it, but they’ve got to go where the job takes them. In this case, it’s a couple of inches for lifestyle about an elderly gentleman named Joshua who tends to his vegetable garden with something nearing religious devotion.  
“Vegetables, harvest, Thanksgiving,” Adler had told him with an ample supply of hand waving as he slid the information across the desk. “You get the idea.”  
If Castiel didn’t know any better, he might think that Adler took some sort of odd pleasure in ensconcing him in the mundanity of human interest, and in fact, he’s not entirely certain that this isn’t the case. But the chance to get out in the field is a miracle in and of itself, no matter how small, and working with Dean certainly doesn’t hurt.  
This Joshua fellow lives out in Alameda in a narrow, old Victorian, its light blue paint buckling in places, but the hedges surrounding the door are flush with some of the most ferociously crimson roses Castiel has ever seen.  
“Do you like them?” calls a whispery deep voice as Joshua comes around the side of the house. “It’s my own special blend of winter-blooming tea roses.”  
“They’re nice,” says Dean, with a weird little half-smile before he hauls his camera in front of his face to snap a few quick photos, crouching in close to the plants. The clicking of the shutter continues as the three of them troop into the backyard, which, Castiel sees quickly, is not so much yard as it is a greenhouse, the glass and steel of it nearly as tall as the house itself and packed thick with green.  
Inside it’s a good ten, maybe fifteen degrees warmer, and already Castiel’s coat is feeling more than a little superfluous.  
“Do you mind?” he asks, removing his overcoat and suit jacket, laying them across a small workbench by the door.  
“By all means,” says Joshua. “Make yourselves comfortable.” Castiel rolls up his sleeves and tries not to notice the way Dean’s eyes linger on his exposed forearms. They make a wide circle around rows of squash and snap peas, carrots, peppers, and a spindly tomato plant. All along the way, Joshua explains the origin of each plant as Castiel takes furious notes and Dean’s camera snaps away.  
Some of them began their lives in nurseries in California, while others come from such faraway places as China and Greece. The pièce de résistance, however, is a squat, sprawling peach tree in the southern corner, the last of its pink blossoms still clinging to the nearly black wood of the branches, which are heavy with fruit.  
“This one belonged to my wife, Lydia,” says Joshua. “God rest her soul.” He moves over to the tree, running a hand gently against its bark. “She’s the one who started all this. Got me interested in things that grow.”  
“Must be hard keeping it in this climate,” says Dean.  
“It’s not too tricky once you get the hang of it,” Joshua replies simply. “You just have to listen to what they want.” He gestures around to his plant children. “That’s one thing I learned from Lydia. If you pay really close attention, they’ll tell you what they need.” He reaches up and plucks two low hanging peaches directly off the branch, tossing one each to Dean and Castiel. “After that, you have to trust them to do what they’ve gotta do, ‘cause they know better than you.” He laughs, looking up at the branches, face full of affection. Somewhere by his shoulder, Castiel hears the shutter of Dean’s camera clicking once more.  
“Try those,” says Joshua. “There’s no point in me having all of this unless I get to share it now and again.”  
“Thank you,” says Castiel tipping his head and sinking his teeth into the tender skin of the fruit. It’s sweet and tangy and bright like summer, and Castiel feels a sudden pang of homesickness. Oddly, something so small could bring it on in floods, but he’s given up on trying to divine the origins of such things. He glances over at Dean who has his eyes closed, lost in savoring the taste of what seems to be more than just his peach. Castiel doesn’t like to attribute any sort of power to things that don’t deserve them, but in this instance, the golden ripeness of the fruit may just prove him wrong.  
“I think this will do very nicely in our Saturday edition,” says Castiel later on their way out as he shucks on his top layers of clothing once more. “Someone will reach you by telephone with further details.” The sticky sweet juice still lingers on his lips like the memory of a kiss. Dean’s hand is firm but gentle at the small of his back is it guides him back out into the blustery November cold.  
A few days later, Castiel hears the crackling of the intercom on his desk before Meg’s voice breaks through.  
“Your presence is being requested in darkroom three, angel,” she says tersely, and he would tell her off for the obnoxious pet name if he thought it would do any good.  
“Thank you, Miss Masters,” he says as clearly as possible. “I’ll be down in just a moment.”  
When he arrives, he’s surprised to find Meg leaning near the door to the darkroom bay, arms crossed over her chest, narrow hip jutted out to the side.  
“Winchester wants you,” she says, one eyebrow beginning to flirt with her hairline, and Castiel’s not sure why he’s suddenly feeling like the butt of a joke that’s flown miles above his head. He loosens his tie just a little where it feels like it’s choking him all of a sudden.  
Meg pushes herself off the wall and back onto her shiny high heels. The sound of their clacking, like the interminable ticking of a clock, is slow to die away as she heads for the elevators.  
Castiel knocks once on the door to darkroom three.  
“Dean,” he calls through the wood.  
“Yeah, you’re good,” says Dean. “Come on in.”  
It’s the chemical non-smell that usually keeps him out. A dark, cramped room filled to the gills with fixer and developer and God knows what else should smell like a recipe for rapid asphyxiation. But the only thing he can smell as he steps inside the glorified broom closet is the lingering whiff of tobacco that follows Dean around like a shadow.  
“They’re still percolating,” says Dean, indicating a tray to his far left, closest to the sink. “But I wanted you to pick which one you want to go with your copy.”  
Castiel plucks the stack of photographs out of the bath with a set of ungainly tongs and begins to flip through them. He can recognize when each was taken. The first is of the roses, the effect of their color somewhat lost in the black and white and grey of the image.  
The next few are of Joshua leading them through the greenhouse, gesturing to his tomato plant as he explains why he prefers the Roma variety and crouching beside a spiraling vine of snow peas.  
The last in the pile is again of Joshua, but shot from a lower angle, the diverging branches of the peach tree fanning out behind him like the wing bones of a bird as he stares serenely up at the weak sunshine filtering in through the greenhouse roof.  
“This one,” says Castiel instantly. It only takes a moment for him to feel it viscerally, that this is The One.  
“Good choice,” says Dean, maybe even a little proud that Castiel’s finally getting the hang of it. “If Adler gives it the go-ahead.”  
“He’d be a fool not too,” says Castiel with the utmost conviction.  
Of course, Adler chooses the photograph of the flowers, but Castiel finds he doesn’t mind so much so long as he gets to keep the rejects. Call him crazy, but something in the image of that old man piously gazing upon his tree says more about Dean than the man would ever willingly say about himself.  
He hadn’t intended on coming here at all. In fact, out of all the myriad ways he could have chosen to spend Christmas Eve, this is dangerously close to the bottom of the list. It is not so much that he dislikes his coworkers, or even that he dislikes socializing with them. Quite the contrary in fact. But given the choice between braving the damp and the chill in itchy wool and spending a night eating gingerbread on the couch with Anna, watching A Christmas Night with the Stars, he knows distinctly which he prefers.  
Granted there has never been the lure of Dean before, but he figures that can’t possibly be a good enough reason to go, or at least it shouldn’t be. Except Anna had refused to quit her cajoling until he was standing on the front steps, coat wrapped tightly around his body and a thick scarf tucked around his neck.  
So now two hours later he’s standing by himself, watching from a corner as the rest of the party continuous with raucous merriment, Irving Berlin warbling away on the old Argosy. He tries to tell himself he’s not hiding. But Meg has been lurking around like an omen all night, and still, there’s no sign of Dean.  
Castiel has had too much eggnog, can feel the way that seventh cup has made everything go soft and warm around the edges, how the twinkling lights strung around the office glow like stars and the smell of cinnamon and ginger and pine fill his nose in a heady rush. He knows he’s had too much from the way his body feels electric after he tosses back cup number eight and realizes that he’d promised Anna he wouldn’t overdo it.  
His feet feel about nine times too big, and he can feel the first beads of sweat running uncomfortable down his back. Suddenly, being incased in the stupid red sweater his mother-in-law had bought him is the absolute worst thing he can think of, worse than the green plaid tie like a constrictor around his neck, worse than the way he can’t seem to get his eyes to cooperate and focus on anything.  
Some vague part of his brain thinks he’d be doing himself a great service to get a cab and call it a night, and he is about to leave, honestly, he is. But the rest of his brain, the parts wrapped in a soothing swaddle of alcohol, keeps his feet firmly planted when a hand lands on his shoulder. He keeps his back resolutely turned.  
“Cas,” says Dean a little too close to his right ear. “Didn’t think you’d show, pal.” He chuckles somewhere low in his throat, raising every last hair on the back of Castiel’s neck. The hand slips away, skidding across his shoulder blade as it goes, and it’s all Castiel can do not to lean in and chase its gentle pressure. “Doesn’t really seem like your thing.”  
“I guess I’m just full of surprises,” Castiel says, hoping to God that he’s not slurring too badly.  
“That so?” And Christ, but he can practically hear the leer in Dean’s voice. That same, stupid, booze-drenched part of his brain is turning him on the spot, consciously much too close to the body next to him.  
Dean looks good. Not that that’s any great shock, but seeing him out of his usual wrapper of black cotton and flannel and denim is equal parts refreshing and alarming because the stupid fucker cleans up nice. Castiel thinks maybe he has completely lost his mind, as he rakes glassy eyes over Dean, from corduroy covered legs to dark green sweater and finally up to his face, gone pink to the tips of his ears.  
“If you laugh, I swear to God, Cas,” says Dean, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “Sam gave me this sweater.” He says it like a swear word. “Told me if I didn’t wear it, he’d know. Ass. He would too.” He pulls the fabric away from his body as if its softness alone is the reason for offense and knocks back his own cup of eggnog.  
Laughing is the furthest thing from Castiel’s mind, and he swallows thickly around his own tongue, clumsy in his suddenly dry mouth. He’s not sure when that comfortable, electric warmth that had spread all the way to his limbs condensed like a wildfire in his stomach, but something of it must show on his face, because Dean reaches out, hands resting on either side of Castiel’s neck.  
“Whoa there, Cas. You okay?” he says. This time Castiel can’t help but lean in a little bit, swaying slightly on the balls of his feet, head canting into Dean’s palm. It’s dark enough in the little hallway that leads to Castiel’s office that anyone would have to really be looking to spot them tucked into the shadows. But still, his heart is in his throat, rabbit quick pulse hammering away on the underside of his jaw, and his palms feel slick as he watches Dean flick out his tongue, and pass it over his lower lip.  
There’s no mistaking the way Dean is leaning forward, leaning in. Just millimeters separate them. Castiel can taste Dean on every inhalation, can count every one of his eyelashes, and this is it. Just the softest brush of chapped lips against his own, the pad of a thumb brushing against his cheekbone, and a firm body sidling up against him and—  
Castiel’s brain grinds to a screeching halt. Shit. Shit shit shit. He places his palms flat against Dean’s chest and shoves. Hard. They stumble apart, Dean just catching himself on the wall, staring at Castiel in confusion before his face shutters completely and all that’s left is anger.  
“Dean, I…” Castiel begins, but Dean is pushing past him out of the hallway.  
“Save it,” says Dean, disappearing into the milling crowd.  
The heat in Castiel’s belly is not so friendly now, and he thinks this time he might actually be sick; guilt, arousal, and liquor tangling themselves in his gut. He just barely makes it to the men’s room before the heaving overtakes him, and when he finally collapses exhausted against the side of the stall the noise of the party outside has died away.  
Anna arrives half an hour later in her bathrobe and slippers to drive him home, and he avoids making eye contact the whole way there.  
Christmas morning he wakes feeling steamrolled and headachy and it’s his goddamn fault. He deserves it more than he’s ever deserved a hangover in his life. And Anna, who still sleeps next to him, a little frown creasing the area between her eyebrows, what can he say to her that will make any of this better. He runs a gentle hand through her hair, and it feels soft sleep-warm in his fingers. There’s nothing he can really say to make anything better. Not with her, not with Dean, and certainly not with himself. Guilt is slowly becoming his closest friend, and he wonders how he could have been stupid enough to let it happen.  
It occupies him as he slips quietly as possible out of bed, padding down into the kitchen, putting a pot of coffee on and throwing together what he can to make Anna a Christmas breakfast; eggs, bacon, and because he’s feeling especially ambitious, he cooks some pancakes in the leftover grease.  
Of course, it occurs to him that no matter how delicious, there’s no pretending this meal isn’t somewhat for his own benefit, his own peace of mind, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still make his goddamn wife feel special. They don’t really do presents. As much as she enjoys the spirit of the season, and hell, even the decorations, Anna doesn’t like the idea of celebrating the appropriation of pagan culture for the benefit of imperialism. And Castiel is perfectly fine with avoiding a yearly reminder of his complete lack of piety. So this will have to do, this obvious olive branch.  
Balancing the food-laden TV tray, he pads his way back upstairs. Anna is still asleep when he toes to open the bedroom door, the sunlight just beginning to crawl across their bed. He watches her for a moment, remembers the first time he saw her, remembers what it was like to hear her laugh for the first time, and how he’d thought that maybe she was the only thing he needed to finally feel human.  
But even as he stares at her he thinks of the look of hurt on Dean’s face, the way he’d felt electrified just before, close enough to count the spaces of each breath, and then the gut-wrenching stab of remorse as he cut it off before it even started. Who even knows if he is half the man either of these two people deserves, but pushing the feelings out of the way seems to be his best bet.  
Crossing to where Anna lies, he reaches out a hand, running the back of his fingers across her cheek. She stirs, looking up at him with a little smile that falls for a moment, just long enough to make Castiel’s stomach drop, but it returns, tentatively, as she sees the tray.  
“I’m an ass,” Castiel says. “And I’m sorry.”  
“Yeah,” says Anna, sitting up and relieving him of his load. “You’re just lucky you’re cute.”  
Her almost-smile is enough to give him some hope, just enough that he thinks maybe whatever it is that he has going on will pass, whatever this thing is, it’ll just be a tiny blip on the radar that he’ll be able to laugh about someday. He’ll take care of it after the holiday, set Dean straight about what they are and can be, and everything can go back to the way it was. It’s with that little piece of hope, held like sand in his fist, that he climbs back into bed.  
The next time he sees Dean is after New Year's and he finds that every single thing he could say in apology or explanation sounds phony even to his own ears. He would be lying if he said he hadn't known what was happening in all that time they'd spent together, that it wasn't some sort of odd courtship.  
He'd just been too big of a coward to admit it, and an even bigger coward for not admitting that he'd allowed it, that he'd wanted it even. And maybe that makes him a terrible person, but who said he was ever really good? He had liked the idea of having someone he could call a friend, and if it had made Dean happy too, then he certainly wasn't going to call it off.  
As it is, it goes like this: Castiel is sitting in his office well past when everyone else has left for the night, enjoying the dark silence. It’s not until he’s packing up his things, and leaving for the night that he sees there’s a light on at one of the desks. And of course, as his endlessly terrible luck would have it, Dean is sitting there, poring over a contact sheet in a yellowish pool of light.  
He’s this close to just making a break for the elevators, leaving well enough alone, and chalking it all up to a loss. Except he can’t, because awkward or not, the thought of giving up what weird little friendship they have makes his ribcage feel too tight. And just like that he’s turning left instead of right, stopping just short of the little desk. Castiel thinks with misplaced rye humor that this is starting to become a trend with them, this barging in unannounced, and if there wasn't a sudden rush of guilty heat in his belly then maybe it would be in him to say so out loud. About that at least he keeps his trap shut. He clears his throat.  
"Dean?” He says, pretending it's casual and hating himself for it, but Dean cuts him off with a look. He doesn’t even look angry, not really at least, but there’s something like disappointment there. Dean’s nothing of the cool customer he was when they first did this all those months ago, and something forms like a fist inside Castiel’s chest.  
"What do you want?” Dean asks, tightly. Castiel is kicking himself for staring at Dean's lips as he forms the words, for noticing the slow contracting and expanding of his pupils in his unblinking eyes, for seeing the way the light from the desk lamp throws Dean's freckles into even greater contrast. He can’t go there, he won’t allow it. It’s not fair to Dean and it’s not fair to himself and it sure as shit isn’t fair to Anna. Not for the first time he thinks that she deserves someone so much better than him. But if he’s who everyone’s got to be stuck with, then he might as well try his best to keep his shit in order.  
“I, uh,” he begins lamely. “I just wanted to apologize, for… For misleading you in any way. It wasn’t my intention.” Like ripping off a Band-Aid, he thinks. But Dean says nothing, so Castiel continues. “I don’t want it to affect our working relationship or our friendship,” he says. “I sincerely hope it won’t.”  
Castiel didn’t imagine it would have been possible, but Dean’s stare just gets harder. “You gotta be kidding me,” he says.  
“I’m not kidding you.” Except he knows he has said something wrong because Dean is rising out of his chair.  
“What do you want exactly, Cas, huh?” says Dean, the air around him charged with static. “’Cause no one’s making you do anything.”  
“I know,” he says, staring anywhere but at Dean, determined not to look at him. But Dean moves impossibly closer, and Castiel has that same suffocating feeling the last time they came together like this, and it’s all at once thrilling and terrifying.  
“So what do you want?” he says, his voice low and private.  
“I don’t know,” says Castiel. “I don’t know.”  
Dean’s hand lands on the scruff of his neck, fingers digging in.  
“Jesus, I can’t. Dean.” He wants to back away, to get the hell out of dodge before it’s really too late, and yet just like last time he’s leaning forward and in and his lips are meeting Dean’s, but it’s not so nervous and it’s not so gentle and it’s everything he wants as he clutches hard at the front of Dean’s shirt.  
He hears the crash of a tin full of pens spilling over as Dean braces himself against the edge of the desk, and Castiel moves easily with him in this clumsy, unpracticed dance.  
At first, it’s private, just stolen kisses in the darkened corners and forgotten alleys, friendly hands that mean something different, and necking on the couch in Dean’s apartment like they’re a couple of teenagers. They’ve never done much more than this drunken kissing, at which Castiel feels like he is still all thumbs, despite the needy sounds Dean whispers into his mouth. Or casual touching that’s too close for just friends, but, Cas prays, not close enough to raise the eyes he always feels boring into the back of his skull like their owners can smell something suspicious on him, nosing the air like hounds who can sense that he isn’t normal.  
For a while it feels nice, safe almost, like what they’re doing doesn’t have to matter. Sometimes it’s maddening how badly Castiel wants more. He can tell Dean does too by the way he pats on the knee seems to distinctly be squeezing to his inner thigh. Or the hunger with which Dean presses himself into Castiel like he wants to bury himself in the embrace and never emerge.  
And on those nights Castiel goes home to Anna with more passion than he’s ever thought himself capable of. Because it’s not that simple, going further with Dean. It’s a dark and terrifying path that would swallow him whole. But lord knows he’s balancing precariously on the edge of that precipice.  
Then he and Dean go out drinking one night. It’s at Harvelle’s like usual. But unlike usual, they get completely tanked. By the time they stumble out of the bar and into the alleyway, there’s no doubt about the fact that Castiel is three sheets to the wind. He hopes that Dean’s a little more composed than himself, but he doubts it. They’d been throwing back whiskey like it was water in celebration of absolutely nothing, and the way Dean’s careful swagger has devolved into nothing more than a sloppy stumble, arms a little clumsy around Castiel’s neck, says a hell of a lot. He can feel the eyes of the other patrons on them, but this time he doesn’t even care if they stare. Let them. Let them stare.  
Dean drags him into an alleyway out of the lights of the streetlamps and windows, and they’re in someplace that smells like wet dog and liquor, and his skin is overheated, despite the chill of the night. Dean does his best at divesting him of this chill with his hands and his mouth and even his eyes as they stare up into Castiel’s from where Dean has kneeled on the damp pavement, grinding dirt into the fabric of his jeans.  
“I got you, Cas,” he mutters as he throws the tails of Castiel’s coat away from his body, fumbling with his zipper.  
“Dean,” says Castiel, because he trusts him, and watches with rapt attention as Dean wets his lips, face pink from more than just the liquor, and Jesus God, but Castiel hasn’t been this hard since who even remembers how long ago. And who cares, honestly, because Dean’s working his fingers under the waistband of Castiel’s shorts, tugging them down with his slacks to mid-thigh, pushing up his shirt so that just enough of him is exposed. Just enough and too much, and the air is cold where it hits his flush skin.  
Dean’s gentle at first, and it’s no fucking wonder he’d be a gigantic, god damn cock tease. Castiel’s flesh erupts with goosebumps when Dean trails his wet lips across the jut of his hipbone and onto the crease of his thigh before finally, finally sliding his lips around the head of Castiel’s cock. And thank the lord for whiskey dick or he would have been done for before it even started because Dean’s really going to town on him, one hand wrapped around the base to steady what he can’t get in his mouth and the other sliding up to roll Castiel’s balls in his palm, and Christ he just…  
It just… So Castiel grips the sides of his head—doesn’t push, just grips—the heels of his hands on the freezing shells of Dean’s ears, fingers scratching at the back of his skull. Dean hums around him, licking once up the shaft, tongue darting across the slit before diving back down, and Castiel’s going to die, he’s sure of it. He can feel when he hits the back of Dean’s throat, the way the muscles there work to accommodate him.  
“Dean,” he says again, but it comes out like two words as his breath hitches in the middle. And then Dean looks up at him through his long eyelashes, locks his gaze with a single-minded focus on Castiel and that’s all she wrote, because Castiel comes like a punch to the gut, nearly doubling over with the force of it. But Dean’s there, licking his lips as he helps Castiel straighten out his clothes. And when he leans in for a kiss of, fuck, appreciation maybe, or the promise of reciprocation or something else altogether that makes his head spin, it’s soft and warm and it tastes a little funny, but he thinks it wouldn’t be so bad if they never left this alley.  
Of course, they have to eventually, and Dean piles him into a taxi, looking infinitely soberer than he’d seemed to be when they had first stumbled outside. But he doesn’t get a chance to question the funny little look Dean gives him before the cab is whisking him home, where he stands under the shower for twenty minutes in a sad attempt to wash away the night.  
He and Dean don’t really talk about it afterward so much, but the small touches that used to be halfway to discrete lose their subtlety entirely.  
It doesn't go like he thought it would. Not that he has ever been one of these great romantics who believes in the involvement of souls in carnal acts of the flesh, but the casual way in which things evolve is surprising in its understatement as if they both knew the direction the track they were on was taking them without it ever needing to be spoken as if it was simply understood that they would always converge on this point like a pair of magnets.  
He's over at Dean's place one evening, the pair of them draped casual and many-limbed across the couch, barefoot in a familiar intimacy that's become something like a secret code between them. It's their own private shorthand, Castiel thinks. The beer in his hand, bottle warming under his palm, slides easily down his throat, and when he catches Dean watching the bob of his Adam’s apple out of the corner of his eye, he smiles. It's nice.  
That they can sit here doing absolutely nothing, that Robert Johnson can eke out scratchily from the turntable, low and mellow, that their legs can touch from hip to knee, not press, just touch, and that their toes can bump when they shift in their seats and they can pretend it doesn't matter. It's nice. The music dies away until the only sound is the soft hiss and thump of the needle across the grooves of vinyl. It just makes sense for Castiel to lean in.  
Dean's lips are soft and cool, slippery from the beer, and it's nothing like it was at that disastrous Christmas party, nothing like all those other times they snuck into dark corners or alleys or away from over-bright street lamps. Where those were hard and urgent and over much too quickly and, more often than not, fueled by too much whiskey and drunken bravado, this is soft and tender, and Dean's hand comes up, fingers curling under Castiel's jaw, thumb resting on his chin.  
There's a thunk when Dean sets down both of their beers on the poor, battered table, then both of his hands are on Castiel's face, thumbs running across his cheekbones in an inescapable déjà vu, just ghosting across his eyelashes.  
They separate for air. Castiel can see his reflection in Dean's blown pupils, can see the disbelieving look he wears, and for a hysterical moment, he wants to laugh at how the hell it took them this long to do something so wonderful. But then Dean's leaning back in, and he just barely has time to snatch in a hastened breath before there are lips once again on his.  
Dean doesn't have any sort of romanticized taste. He doesn't taste like beer or the cigarettes he smokes or the coffee he likes drinking black. He just tastes distinctly like Dean, and that's enough because his tongue is kneading at the seam in Castiel's lips and there's nothing terribly insistent about it, just a friendly suggestion that this would be a fantastic direction in which to take things.  
Who is Castiel to disagree with? He's not sure when his hands found their way onto Dean's arms, but his fingers are curling possessively into the muscle, pulling Dean closer, trying to create as many points of contact as he can manage. When Dean shifts to kneel on the floor between his parted legs, he feels every nerve ending in his body ignite at once, and when Dean rucks up his tee-shirt and tosses it aside, revealing miles upon miles of warm skin,  
Castiel is a stick of dynamite with wicks for limbs. His skin is warm and too tight with the way Dean leans in to undo the buttons of his shirt and slide it off, placing something between a bite and a kiss in the dip below his sternum, and undoing the fastening on Castiel's pants with one hand. This is when that laugh that he's been keeping captive sneaks out, an uncontrollable thing that sounds wild even to his own ears. Dean stares up at him with a look of confusion.  
"You're an odd one, you know that?" he says, sitting back on his haunches.  
"It's been said," Castiel replies, running his fingers up Dean's neck and through the fuzzy hairs at the back of his head. Dean turns his head to nip at the meat of Castiel’s palm before replacing his teeth with his lips.  
That's what Castiel finds the most surprising in all of this; for all that Dean is loud and brash and rough around much more than just the edges, in this, he's gentle to the point of reverence. Where he had expected Dean to shove him down onto the creaky brass bed, he's laid out. Where he had expected the rough friction of skin on skin, he gets a smooth slide. Where he expected grips tight enough to bruise, hands are careful and slow until he's wound so bowstring tight he can barely breathe for it.  
Dean hovers over him on his elbows, balancing himself in the vee of Castiel's thighs, chest rising and falling like he's just run a fucking marathon, and maybe that's really what they've been doing all along, what this thing between them has been.  
"What?" says Castiel, attempting unsuccessfully to hide the hitch in his voice. "Dean, what?"  
"You sure?" he asks, licking his lips, the words nothing more than a whisper across Castiel's skin. It's got nothing to do with nobility and he knows it. He wants to pretend that he's not nervous as hell, that he doesn't know that Dean is too, that they haven’t both been waiting for this from the moment they met. He's had plenty of opportunities to turn back, to say no, but right now, here, skin to skin to skin with his ankle bones brushing Dean's knees? This is not one of those times.  
"Yes," he says.  
He'd known, however abstractly, that there'd be a pain, a slow ache, but he hadn't anticipated the way it burns up like tinder, a shift so subtle he barely notices it until it's wending its way up to his spine, curling, coiling, into a tight spiral that starts at the small of his back. Dean is all at once within and without, the rhythmic slipping. When Dean is finally fully hilted he shutters, eyes half-lidded and dark and this isn’t anything Castiel has ever felt before, can feel Dean’s heart beating in his skin, in his own blood, like they’re sharing this one set of arteries and veins, and when Dean moves? Jesus, when Dean moves and Castiel can feel every single inch of him, he just...  
And when Dean turns his head to kiss the inside of Castiel’s thigh, and Castiel just knows that the noises coming out of his mouth are more than a little desperate, it’s all too much and not enough. He’s so hard it physically hurts, but Dean touches him, wraps a hand around him. Castiel’s fingers interlace with Dean’s and his eyes snap shut. He blazes like a forest fire, a hot flush staining his skin.  
He's incandescent with it. Dean's fingers tangle in his sweaty hair, his face buried in Castiel's shoulder, mouthing at the jutting tendon in his neck. His muffled shout and full-body shiver are all it takes for Castiel to shatter into a thousand pieces, back arching away from the bed and in that split second he feels like he understands everything about himself that he’s ever squashed down and hidden away, as it rushes out of him in a shout.  
When he comes down he's boneless and drenched and he can't quite feel his limbs, but this is the best he has ever felt in his entire goddamn life and he hopes, prays, that it's not just a one-off. Above him, Dean is still but for his slow, even breathing. It's funny, he thinks, that out of everything he never expected, the one that sets him reeling is the way Dean's somehow managed to slide so easily under his skin, cocooning there like it's second nature, and how Castiel has accepted it as fate.  
He doesn't think about home and he doesn't think about places he should be or places he's expected to be, and he knows that part of him should feel guilty for it, but when Dean rolls away only to press up behind him, throwing an arm around his waist and rubbing small circles on his belly, paying no mind to the mess that stains his skin, he really couldn't give a fuck. Instead, he settles himself back against Dean’s broad chest and falls into a contented sleep.  
When he wakes, he slides noiselessly out of bed, not bothering with his clothes, which seem a little redundant at this point anyhow. He's a little sore and wobbly on his stiff legs, but he finds he doesn't really mind so much, his skin prickling with contentment. It's not an uncomfortable sensation, but it's bizarre all the same, and he has a hard time nailing down what it is, sliding slippery like a fish between his fingers. It makes the scarred floor beneath his naked feet feel somehow more real. He pushes it aside.  
Moving into the kitchen, he stares at the small photo still clinging to the refrigerator door. It's tatty and fingerprinted in the way that loved things always are, and it makes him smile. He turns on the kitchen tap, splashing some cool water across his face, then tiptoes as quietly as possible back into the living room to stand in front of the monstrous bookshelf he’s begun to regard as the physical manifestation of Dean’s brain.  
“Hey Cas,” Dean rasps from the other side of the room, still half-covered in his quilt where he sits in bed. He’s backlit, the pale winter sunshine throwing him into shadow and ringing him in a ghostly halo of light. Castiel’s eyes go wide, watering as he stares at Dean framed in the window. There’s a quiet snap, then the minute flash of teeth.  
“Did you just take my picture?” he asks.  
“Probably,” says Dean, and Castiel can hear the smirk in his voice.  
“You couldn’t have waited for me to pull myself together a little?” says Castiel, crossing his arms ineffectually across his naked torso.  
“Could’ve. Didn’t want to.” His little crooked grin, more open than his usual wide feral smile, is a little disarming. Castiel has never felt particularly self-conscious about his naked body. He's always been on the lean side, but in good enough shape that he knew he had nothing to be ashamed of. It isn't as if he is gagging to run off to San Bernadino to live his life in hedonism, but he is more than comfortable in his own skin.  
With Dean looking at him though, really looking at him, he suddenly feels more exposed than quite frankly he's comfortable with. He's not altogether familiar with this kind of naked, and it makes the back of his neck prickle and his lungs feel like they're not working properly.  
He turns his back to alleviate the pressure building behind his ribs and moves over to the shelf, running his fingers across the spines of books and record sleeves, concentrating on memorizing the feel of them. Most of them are second hand and more than a little careworn, just like almost everything else about Dean, and Castiel can't help thinking about the other fingers that might have been here priorly.  
He rolls his neck, letting the tension that's built up where it joins with his spine creak out in popping of bone. When he turns back around, Dean is peering up at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling in the fond half-smile that Castiel finds especially devastating.  
"Cas?" says Dean, eyebrow raised.  
"I don't know," says Castiel. "I don't know why I thought of it. But my mother always used to scold us for going outside without our shirts, even in the heat. She'd say, 'Boys, if your wrist is your ankle and your elbow is your knee, then what does that make your armpit?'"  
Dean considers this for a moment before answering. "And that is why I don't believe in God," he says, his bed creaking loudly as he lies back down, patting the mattress in a clear invitation. But Castiel doesn’t budge.  
Instead, he turns back to one of the archival boxes on the shelf, an older one labeled “Tulsa” with its lid sitting cockeyed. Pulling the box off the shelf, he peers inside. On the top is a photograph of a man standing behind the controls of a towering Ferris wheel, a ball cap pulled low over his lined, weather-beaten face.  
A little handwritten title on the back reads, “Hank, 1955.” The next photograph, titled “Rita and Lulu, 1955,” is of a pretty young woman in a floral dress with wavy dark hair and equally dark lipstick, pale eyes crinkling at the corners as she smiles out at the lens. Peeking out from under her skirt is a freckly little girl with pigtails. Castiel smiles at the little girl’s scowl.  
The covers rustle as Dean pushes them back, padding still naked across the floor.  
“’S that the Tulsa box?” asks Dean with a little upward curl of his lip. “God, I guess I was, what? Sixteen, seventeen then? We were only there for a month, but it was just long enough for county fair to roll into town.” Dean moves behind Castiel, fingers digging lightly into the spurs of his hips so that they’re pressed skin to skin from shoulder to knee.  
“These are…” Castiel says, not really sure to begin. They’re beautiful in their own off-kilter way, but he’s not so sure Dean would appreciate the compliment. “Very human,” is what he settles on, earning him a bark of laughter. “And multitudinous.”  
“Yeah, well. People, man. You know?” Dean offers, as Castiel flips to a random photo in the middle of the stack.  
This one is of a man who looks just south of forty with a leather jacket and tired eyes that say he’s seen too much in too short a period of time. He doesn’t appear to be looking at the camera, and it strikes Castiel that the picture looks as if it was taken from some distance.  
“My dad,” Dean says simply, reaching around Castiel’s middle to pluck the box out of his hands and replace it on the shelf.  
“C’mon,” he says, mouthing at the knob at the top of Castiel’s spine, nosing at the soft, downy hairs at the back of his neck. “I can think of something more interesting for us to do than standing around and looking at my pictures.”  
Castiel’s no idiot. He can see the cheap ploy for what it is from a mile away. But he lets it go, for this moment at least, because Dean’s that proverbial horse that’s too stubborn to drink, no matter how many times you lead it to water.  
They’re sitting across from each other in a ramshackle burger joint when he gives the feeling a proper name, feels it in his chest instead of someplace a little further south. Dean looks up at him, halfway through chewing a large bite of his double bacon cheeseburger, and smiles like it’s nothing like it’s easy, and that’s when he realizes that yes, it really sort of is. He slides his foot innocuously in between Dean’s, and when he feels Dean’s feet pinch a little tighter on either side of his, the words are right on the tip of his tongue.  
They’re just there, just about to tumble out. He may be blunt as an ax about some things, but this has never been one of them. But as they’re building in his throat, on his tongue, at the backs of his teeth, the fry cook standing in the window of the kitchen suddenly clears his throat and Dean is turning away to get a sip of Coke.  
That’s when Castiel loses his nerve, goes back to eating his plate of french-fries like nothing happened at all, like he wasn’t about to change everything, maybe irreparably, maybe forever. He knows he must keep himself in check where these things are concerned, but what’s crazy is that it’s the thought of forever that makes a ketchup fry go down all lumpy and sideways.  
It happens in one of those innocuous moments when they're just sitting together on Dean's cramped sofa, having a drink together in the way that they do.  
"I've moved around a lot," Dean says suddenly, and Castiel goes very still, knows he needs to tread very carefully.  
"You've said," he says quietly.  
Dean nods. "My dad, he..." He falters for a moment like he's fumbling for the thread of the story. "My mom," he tries this time. "She died when Sammy was just a baby, not too long after that picture was taken actually." He nods toward the fridge. "House fire. We were living in Kansas, and it gets drier than a bone out there. Wasn't anybody's fault, but you couldn't have convinced my dad of that. It was just the first fucked up thing in a long string of fucked up things. I mean my dad went off to war and dumped us with his friend, Bobby. Told me to take care of Sammy for him. I was six when he left." He scrubs a hand across his face and throws back a swallow of his whiskey. "But I did, you know. I looked after him as best as I could. Stupid ass kept running away. And even when our dad came back... John was always a mean drunk.  
Castiel says nothing, just lets his knee brush up against Dean’s.  
“We never stayed anywhere for very long. I don’t know what my dad thought he was chasing, but… Sammy got me the camera one year for Christmas. I didn’t bother asking how he got it, and sneaking around to get pictures made was tricky until Bobby showed me how to do it. Man’s got more hidden rooms in his house.” Dean almost laughs at some joke that Castiel can’t understand.  
“And Sammy left first. Got outta there as soon as he could. Ran off to Stanford, and man, I was pissed as hell, him leaving me behind. I mean I damn near raised the kid, and that’s how he thanks me, you know?”  
“But you got out too,” says Castiel.  
“Yeah. I guess.” Dean takes another deep swig of his drink. “This is the first place I’ve ever stayed for more than a couple of months at a time.” He really doesn’t need to say why, because Castiel understands. In theory at least.  
“And Sam’s got his own life in Los Angeles with his wife and his career and everything. Got the perfect, apple pie life.”  
“I left my family too,” says Castiel. “I lost my brother and I lost my faith, so I left.” He turns to Dean, looking him dead in the eye. “I suppose we’re both runaways, huh?”  
“Yeah, Cas. I suppose we are,” Dean says, filling both of their glasses with another finger of whiskey. They sit and drink silently, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee on Dean’s dilapidated sofa.  
"Do you like your job?" Dean asks, out of the blue.  
"It pays the bills."  
"That's not what I asked."  
And not for the first time, he realizes it's the small differences that truly get his attention, more than the obvious smoothness where he's used to finding something more substantial, short bristly blonde where he's used to long silken red, the hardness of muscle under golden skin where he's used to something soft, bird boned, and pale. No, it's not these things that catch him off balance and make his head feel dizzy. That's reserved for things like Dean's nervous nail-biting, the idiotic ticklishness of the insides of his elbows (because apparently, he can't do anything like a normal person), the way he can whistle along to every Blind Willie Johnson album he puts on his turntable, and how Castiel's forehead fits perfectly in the dip at the top of Dean's shoulder blades.  
More than all of this though, he likes the loose, sprawling feeling that uncurls itself within him, and how easy it's become for him to smile. It's the funniest thing, the way it creeps up on him and slithers around his skin. Castiel chooses resolutely to ignore this feeling because damn it, he's scared shitless to call this particular spade a spade. So instead he just lets Dean tease him about his inability to respect Dean's personal space even though they both know it's really the other way around. Life, Castiel thinks, can be a real fucking tragedy sometimes. But other times? Other times it’s pretty damn nice.  
“I know,” says Castiel with a sigh, downing his whiskey in one and topping it off with what’s left in the small glass bottle. And then the words start pouring out of him. “I wanted to do something important. I wanted to change people’s minds.” Dean snorts. “I was an idealistic kid, thought I knew what was up. And for a while there, I was in the fast lane to getting it. I was supposed to go to Asia, you know.”  
“I’d heard.”  
“Oh yeah?”  
“Becky likes to talk.” Dean shoots him a smirk.  
“Becky likes your pretty mouth.”  
“She’s not the only one.” Dean laughs and Castiel feels it in his chest like it’s heating him from the inside out.  
“So why’d you stop?” Dean says finally.  
“I got married, I had a reason to stay,” says Castiel quietly. He looks up at Dean, looking for what, he doesn’t know—acceptance maybe, or it could almost be forgiveness—but Dean is resolutely staring at the bookshelf.  
“Dean,” says Castiel, his voice small.  
Dean gets up for a moment, leaning over the coffee table to fumble for something on the shelf before Castiel sees that it’s a photograph.  
“Here,” says Dean. “I printed it the other day.”  
It’s Castiel very obviously naked, shoulders and back turned away from the camera, hair a royal mess, and standing up every which way. His eyes are a little wide, groggy in the weak morning sun, but he looks, to his great surprise, well and truly happy. It’s the kind where you’d have to know what you’re looking for to spot it, but it’s there. But all the same…  
“You printed this at the office?” he asks.  
“Well, where else was I gonna do it?”  
“What if someone had seen?” Castiel can feel his face draining of blood.  
“No one saw,” says Dean coldly. “I’m not an idiot. I cleaned up.”  
Castiel stares at the photograph, clutching it tightly in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he says finally, tucking the photograph into the pocket of his coat.  
“Yeah,” says Dean, leaning into the couch, easy body at odds with a muscle in his jaw jumping furiously. And Castiel wishes it were so easy for him. But there’s Anna, he reminds himself. There’s Anna and it’s not fair to her, and he has responsibilities that he can’t just give up in favor of doing as he pleases.  
“I should probably go,” he says.  
They still meet and they still fuck, but it’s a week before the shuttered look leaves Dean’s eyes.  
For Memorial Day, he and Anna go to visit Michael in Virginia because it's a tradition for Castiel to make a yearly sojourn home, and it's been far too long since he visited Gabriel. When he mentions this to Anna, she gives his hand a gentle squeeze and runs her fingers up and down his forearms, a look of too much sympathy in her eyes that makes him think the scars on his heart are visible.  
When he tells Dean, he's offered a beer and a nod of understanding that yes, sometimes being a brother is the hardest thing in the world, but they leave it there in favor of getting in one last slow, languid fuck before Castiel has to leave. He adds this to his growing catalog of all things Dean, that even if he doesn't always have the words to say what he means, his body says it for him.  
It's not so much that Castiel is dreading the trip in and of itself. In point of fact he's always loved flying, always loved the feeling of being able to see the curve of the Earth and feel somehow separate from its pull.  
He's not even fussed about seeing Michael again. They have their differences, sure, but at the end of the day, they're still brothers. And yet he can't shake this churning feeling in his stomach as he boards the plane, this amorphous sense of foreboding. It might be Gabriel or it might be not seeing Dean for the long weekend or it might be some unseen threat that he hasn't even sussed out yet, but he can't help feeling distinctly like a man going before the electric chair.  
"Sweetheart, are you alright?" Anna asks when he orders a scotch rocks before they've even taken off.  
He tears his gaze away from the window to look at her, to truly soak her in, and the sickening guilt that he thought was in remission is rearing its ugly cancerous head, growing in him like a rotting tumor. The stewardess returns with his drink, and he smiles politely.  
"I'm fine," he lies, giving Anna a soft kiss. If she is confused, then she shows nothing of it on her face as she goes relaxed and quiet under his lips.  
Over Chicago, he watches a cloud cave in on itself, bleeding all over the city below, and he wonders how it's possible to so fiercely love two people at once.  
Michael meets them at the airport in his DeVille, shaking Castiel's hand and kissing Anna on the cheek as he throws their bags into the trunk, because if there's one thing a Cadillac has, it's storage space like you wouldn't believe, and don't get him started on how she handles. Castiel isn't sure when he tunes his brother out, but by the time Michael calls him by name, they're driving through a hilly countryside thick with golden grass.  
"You awake back there, baby brother?" Michael asks, peering at him in the rearview mirror.  
"Sorry," he replies, unsticking his face from the window.  
"I said we'll see Gabriel tomorrow afternoon so we can be back in time for the picnic and the fireworks."  
"Right, sure." He grinds the heels of his hands across his eyes to clear the cobwebs that have gathered there, and he suddenly, stupidly, would like nothing more than to speak with Dean, just to hear the reassuring timbre of his voice. He could kick himself.  
When they pull up to the house, he's already got a crick in his neck and his left leg has fallen completely asleep, but he helps drag the bags inside and up the stairs to the small spare bedroom on the second floor. He's home, he thinks, and there should be something comforting about that notion, but when he searches within himself, he finds nothing. He's always wanted so badly for this place to mean something good to him, but all it's ever been is a reminder of things he'd rather forget.  
Instead of seeing his old bedroom, he sees the place where he first became keenly aware that he was not quite like his brothers. He was six, didn't have the words to articulate the feeling, but there was still that odd squirming in his stomach when he'd watch Michael's friend Paul sip lemonade out by the fence. He stares out the window now and thinks that this was the place where he first learned about sin and the fate of the damned and the path to heaven. He had been baptized in a metal tub outside on the front lawn, right near the fence where Paul had stood golden brown, and Castiel had sworn to himself that he'd be normal even if he had to kill himself trying.  
There's a chorus of female laughter from downstairs and a creaking outside his door before Michael pokes his head in.  
"Dinner's ready downstairs," he says. "Lil's got fried chicken going."  
"Yeah, I'll join you in a minute," says Castiel shortly, but Michael doesn't leave.  
"You doing okay, kid?" he asks, and there's a line of real worry between his eyebrows.  
Castiel sighs. "Just thinking," he says. "You know me."  
"Sure," says Michael sounding wholly unconvinced, but for once in his life, he leaves Castiel alone about it. And that small miracle is enough to drag Castiel downstairs.  
When he does, he finds Anna sitting at the kitchen table with a very pregnant Lilith waddling over from the stove, a plate of golden brown drumsticks and wings balanced in her mitted hands. In truth, Castiel has always been a little afraid of Lilith. His brother had met her at church and had been instantly taken with her.  
Castiel, however, had not been so easily won, not wholly convinced by her neatly manicured hair and her sharp, white smile. He’s always thought she is much more like a crocodile in a blonde wig than a woman, but she has not yet murdered Michael in his bed, so that, at least, is something.  
"Castiel," she says, her voice sweet and supple. "So good to see you." He's unsurprised to find that she hasn't lost her talent for making even kind words sound all at once like a threat and an accusation.  
"And you, Lil," he says tightly, pulling out a chair next to Anna, and pointedly ignoring the empty seat next to Lilith. Her chicken may be the most delicious thing he has ever smelled, but that doesn't mean he won't inspect his piece for a wayward razor blade.  
Michael takes his place at the head of the table and extends his hands.  
"I know you're not in the church anymore Castiel, but do you want to say Grace?" he asks.  
"Uh," Castiel answers intelligently, before turning his eyes toward Anna who gives him a minute shrug. "Sure." He bows his head and closes his eyes. His mind goes instantly blank. A minute passes that feels like it might be an hour, and Michael pointedly clears his throat. And then Castiel thinks of Dean, his easy smiles and broad-shouldered confidence. The words tumble out of his mouth before he can catch them.  
"We thank you, God, for all of your blessings; the food on this table, the gift of family, and our overwhelming love for those who cannot be with us." He can't help the small smile that finds its way onto his lips.  
He opens his eyes and lifts his head, and he's met with three puzzled stares.  
"That was...nice," says Michael, nodding his bemused approval. Lilith says nothing, instead of helping herself to two chickens' worth of drumsticks. Anna, though. Anna stares at the place where their hands are joined, and the smile slips from Castiel's face. The rest of dinner passes in a blur of small talk and the uncomfortable sound of chewing.  
It isn't until later that night that he finally decides to throw caution to the wind. It's two in the morning, eleven Dean's time, and unless he's come over ill in the last day, it'll be hours before he goes to sleep. The house is dark and silent as Castiel tiptoes down the stairs. It's stupid and risky, but he can't be bothered to worry about just how little self-control he has when it comes to Dean. The sleepy operator who connects him through doesn't seem to care much either, and by the time Dean picks up his phone, Castiel can't deny the rabbit beat of his heart.  
"Yeah?" says the voice on the other end, smoke rough and low.  
A relieved, "Dean," is all Castiel can manage.  
"You're calling awful late, aren't you?" he says. "What, did you miss my cock that much?" He laughs.  
"Jesus, Dean," Castiel hisses into the phone, pulling the receiver away and scanning around the dark hallway.  
"What are you wearing?" Dean asks, a shit-eating smirk in his voice.  
"Stop it."  
"That bad, huh?"  
Castiel looks down at his threadbare tee-shirt and pale blue shorts, and sighs. "Pajamas," he says. "I can't do this right now."  
"So why'd you call then?" Dean asks, and Castiel isn't so sure himself. Of course, that's not exactly true because he knows damn well, but admitting it?  
"I just..." And the words are on the tip of his tongue, poised right there, but at that moment there's a thump and squeak of footfalls on the stairs. "I have to go," he whispers, returning the phone to its cradle.  
Lilith is trooping belly first toward him at an alarming rate for someone her size, and a bolt of panic sliced through him.  
"Who were you talking to?" she asks, shuffling into the kitchen to dig in the refrigerator.  
"Coworker," he says. It's not exactly a lie after all, and that at the least keeps his voice level and even.  
She returns to the hall, a chicken wing in her hand. Castiel is fixed with a smile like poison as she tears the wing easily in two and takes a bite. "Sleep well," says Lilith, staring not so much at him as, through him, a nasty insinuation laced up in her pale blue eyes. She brushes past him and backs up to bed.  
By the time the worry that has worked its way inside him is quieted enough to release him into sleep, the first few threads of dawn are tricking through the curtains of his bedroom window.  
Arlington National Cemetery is littered with mourners by the time Michael has pulled the Cadillac (I'm telling you, Castiel, she drives like a dream) into the overflow parking lot. This place has always seemed to Castiel to be some odd combination of somber, moving, and deeply creepy. The stark whiteness of the rows of marble headstones is dizzying in its precise geometry and staggering in its sheer size.  
He remembers learning in a history class once about how this place got started, about how the land in which the Union forces had unceremoniously buried their dead and unclaimed had belonged to none other than Robert E. Lee himself. Castiel had suggested once to Michael that Gabriel would have gotten a kick out of knowing he was buried in the most grandiose example of flipping the bird that anyone could ever have dreamed of. Michael, unsurprisingly, hadn't found it funny at all.  
The marker looks the same as all the others, unassuming and stark against the precisely cut grass and nuclear blue of the sky. The letters haven't yet acquired the weather-beaten look of some of its neighbors, but it's hard to believe it's already been twenty years. It's amazing, Castiel thinks, how it feels simultaneously like a lifetime ago and like the wound is still fresh. He's never been particularly skilled where grief is concerned.  
He's buried both his parents and a brother, and never once has he cried about it, about any of them. He remembers staring around at the service, a grown-up ten years old and in his smartest suit. People had been weeping and carrying on and he didn't understand. It's not as if Gabriel was there, didn't know that they were sad for him or that they missed him, or even if he did, he would have thought it was dumb for them to be making such a commotion about it, especially if he was up in heaven with Jesus.  
That was supposed to be paradise, wasn't it? Castiel missed him, of course, missed him fiercely, because it meant that he wouldn't get to go fishing with him again and he wouldn't get to show him the medal he got for having the best book report in his grade. He tried to cry, tried in earnest, but nothing came out.  
Except everything is different now, standing here with Michael. He can feel more keenly than ever, as he stares down at the ground where the dust that was once his brother is interred, that same yawning void, that deep chasm inside himself that will never really be filled. Castiel wipes a palm across his frustratingly blurry eyes, rocking uneasily back and forth on his feet just to give himself something to do. Michael’s hand comes up to squeeze his shoulder tight.  
He glances away, not able to meet his brother’s eye, and spots a solitary man laying a wreath with two headstones down. The man, perhaps feeling Castiel’s gaze, turns to stare back. There is a lynchpin moment, a moment where they could break eye contact and return to their respective mourning as if nothing had ever happened, just two trains crossing paths in the night. Except the moment passes completely unacknowledged as the man gives Castiel an appreciative nod, and Castiel’s guts reply with a small warm feeling.  
That’s what breaks the last level within him. Before he even has time to realize he’s gone weak-kneed, Michael’s arms are reaching up to around his shoulders and pulling him in close. He cries harder than he has in years. Some of it is for Gabriel, no doubt, for never getting to meet the man he might have been one day.  
But part of it is for himself as well, for knowing the heaviness of a heart that’s heavy with twofold love, for his own bitter, inescapable selfishness, for wishing that he believed in God enough to bother with prayer any more. Michael clings fiercely to Castiel’s back as he shakes, one hand clenched in the fabric of his shirt, the other sweeping in soothing little circles. They remain standing together, even as Castiel’s shivers subside and his tears ebb.  
“I think I’m in love with someone else,” he says shakily into the meat of Michael’s shoulder. His brother stills, arms going a little tense and unsure as to if to pull away, and Castiel’s heart clenches tight like a fist within his chest. But after a moment Michael moves back in, arms firmer and surer than before, and Castiel lets himself go slack, jealously absorbing the fraternal affection. Yes, sometimes being a brother might be the hardest thing in the world, but as the pair of them makes their way back to the car in comfortable silence, Castiel decides that it absolutely has its perks.  
They barely get a second to spare for one another the rest of the day, and with a confession like that, Castiel’s not sure if it’s intentional or otherwise. After all, what the fuck do you say? Maybe it’s just his big brother giving him space, or maybe he’s giving himself space. Either way, it’s probably just as well, because the fact of the matter is that even if he didn’t exactly spill all the details, it’s the first time he’s ever mentioned anything about Dean to anyone. But more importantly, now that the words are out, there is no way to take them back, and that, more than anything, scares the shit out of him.  
There’s a picnic that evening with some of the neighbors and every type of salad and Jello mold imaginable. Castiel loads his plate and hangs away from the crowds, picking at the disgusting ambrosia with his fork and longing for one of Dean’s endless string of diners with their cheeseburgers and apple pies and things that he knows he shouldn’t want. Anna kisses him on the cheek as she goes past him up to the bed, and he finds he no longer has a desire to eat. He tosses the rest of his plate in the trash, most of the food uneaten.  
The summer air, thick and cloying, makes his shirt stick to his back, and sweat forms on the neck of his beer. He sighs, leaning heavily into one of the Adirondack chairs on the patio, staring blankly up at the sharp moonlight and taking a pull of his beer. Today had been fucking trying, but isn’t that family for you?  
A shifting of the air behind him is the only warning he gets that someone is about to invade the one moment of peace he’s been allowed all day. He knows instinctively who it will be without needing to turn.  
“Michael,” he says.  
“How did you know who it was, kid?” His brother takes up the seat next to him, his own beer in hand.  
“I recognized the sound of your breathing.”  
“Alright, smart-ass.”  
They sit in quiet contemplation of the stars, letting the silence stretch between them comfortably like a well-worn quilt.  
“You remember the year we saved up box tops for that telescope?” Castiel says, breaking the silence, a small smile wending its way across his lips.  
Michael laughs. “It feels like ancient history.”  
“It took all summer,” says Castiel, taking another swig of beer. “I lost count of how many boxes of Corn Flakes we ate.”  
“Do you remember how mad Dad was about it? ‘Cause we were disrespecting our mother by not eating her atrocious liver loaf?”  
Castiel laughs now too. “And Gabriel told her to send his portion to the troops as his contribution to the war effort?”  
The feeling is infectious, a warm bubbling in his stomach that seems to spill forth from his lips, a sudden lightness taking over him, and he’s clutching at his sides like he hasn’t done in far too long.  
“I used to pretend,” he says, catching his breath. “I used to pretend I could see your planes.” The laughter is slow to die from his voice. “I’d go up to the top of Difficult Run and point the telescope due east and try to see all the way to France.”  
“Did you ever see us?” Michael asks.  
“No.” Castiel runs his thumb through the condensation on his bottle, drawing patterns in the dampness. “Just stars and darkness.” So maybe his next swallow of beer is a little larger than the rest, but who’s counting? “That telescope was a piece of shit anyway.”  
Michael nods, smoothing out a crease in his slacks as if it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. “I still think about him almost every day, y’know?” he says.  
“Yeah.” And Castiel doesn’t mean for his voice to sound as rough as it does.  
For a while, neither of them says anything. They watch as a falling star shoots through the May sky and resolutely refuses to think about planes or gunfire or useless parachutes.  
This time, it’s Michael who breaks the silence.  
“I know this is probably the last thing you want to hear from me,” he starts, and the calm, levelness of his voice is what aggravates Castiel more than anything else.  
“Then maybe you shouldn’t say anything,” he says, looking anywhere but Michael’s eyes.  
“Just listen.” He clears his throat, and for a second it almost seems to Castiel like his unflappable big brother is nervous. “You’ve got a woman in there who loves you,” he says, gesturing with his head at the house behind them, and Castiel could throttle him, but he bites his tongue and clenches his fingers around the neck of his beer. “I get that you’re confused. It happens sometimes.  
But you gotta remember the vows you took nonetheless. ‘Better or worse,’ right? Well, maybe this is that worse.” The squirm of guilt that has been roiling in Castiel’s gut like a boa constrictor clenches suddenly like a vice. “But I have faith in you, pipsqueak,” says Michael, giving him this goddamn open grin, and any protestations that Castiel wants to throw at him, that he doesn’t feel confused, that this feels far from his worst, dies in his throat to be replaced with the anxiety that his big brother, who has never once in his life lied to him or led him wrong, is right about this too.  
“Thanks, Mikey,” he says, draining his beer.  
When he gets in bed that night, Anna is already asleep, curled on her side away from him, the moonlight radiating off her pale skin. He remembers all the reasons he fell in love with her, her passion, her verve, the way she can’t help but argue with anyone who tells her no, the way she sometimes goes selectively deaf when she’s nose deep in Allen Ginsberg or Gertrude Stein, the way she has never let him bullshit her, even from day one, and that ugly guilt slither within him once again. He slides his arm around her middle and pulls her close like a life raft, burying his face into the fan of her orange hair and inhaling deeply the scent of lavender.  
They fly home together the next day, Castiel’s hand wrapped tightly around Anna’s the whole way, and he makes up his mind, realizes what he has to do in between his second and third scotch on the rocks. And if it kills him in the process then so be it. It’s no less than he deserves.  
When he breaks it off with Dean, it’s on Dean’s turf. It takes him a week and a half of careful avoidance to finally work up the guts to do it, and even then he feels like he’s cutting out his heart with a butter knife. It shouldn’t be this hard, he thinks, shouldn’t be this hard to do the right thing. But he lies to Anna, tells her he’s going to pick up more beer and finds himself standing at Dean’s door.  
And the kicker is that Dean looks so goddamn excited when he shows up that it’s all he can do not to turn around and forget that he was ever here. He looks at his shoes, can’t make eye contact, and slouches away from touches because if he gives in then he won’t have the guts to do what needs to get done. And of course, Dean figures it out without Castiel even needing to open his mouth.  
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he says. “You’re really something you know that?”  
“I’m sorry,” is all Castiel can muster. “I’m so, so sorry.” And he really means it. But he can’t see any other way. He got himself into this mess and now he’s got to get himself out. God, but the look on Dean’s face, like he was waiting for this to blow up or for Castiel to break his heart or for disaster to strike. He wants to touch Dean so badly, just give him a simple comfort, but he no longer has that privilege.  
“You coward. You dumb son of a bitch,” Dean says. The same muscle jumps in Dean’s jaw and Castiel is fighting so hard not to tell him it’s all just a sick joke and he’s kidding, but he can’t, not now that he’s come this far.  
“I know.” And he really does, knows it’s all true, but he’s only trying to do the right thing. That’s all he’s ever really wanted. And maybe it means some temporary unhappiness, but this is what’s best in the long run, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter that something inside him feels like it’s withering and dying never to be reborn again.  
And that’s that. He hoped for messy and for angry and for out and out hatred. That would have made it all so much easier. But instead, he’s left with this sick, empty place that seems to grow like a sinkhole in his heart every single day. Work becomes nearly unbearable. He sees Dean haunting the bullpen like a specter until one day he isn’t. Castiel goes on writing letters, goes on writing his stupid human interest pieces that no one is interested in, and keeps trying to pretend that he even gives a shit about his job anymore. But sometimes the charade is too much. Sometimes he locks the door to his office and smokes through an entire pack of Lucky Strikes and listens to John Coltrane on the radio.  
It’s a Wednesday when Anna leaves him.  
Castiel is bone-weary by the time he gets home, the arduous task of living simply tiring him out. He has this constant, strange, headachey feeling. It’s like perhaps he left the stove on in his brain and now it’s just filling up with gas and waiting dormant for that errant spark. He squashes the notion down before it has a chance to build, dragging his feet up the stairs to the front door and letting himself in.  
None of the lights are on. He can feel that something is wrong the minute he steps inside the house. There’s an odd stillness, and amassing disquietude that sets his hackles raising. The air feels thick around his neck, so he loosens his tie. The blue one that Dean liked, he resolutely does not think. God, this is the last thing he needs.  
“Anna?” Castiel calls into the darkened hallway, already feeling the first squirmings of his old friend's anxiety crawling through his veins.  
“I’m here,” she replies, her voice floating down from somewhere up the stairs.  
He doesn’t even bother taking off his coat as he slouches heavy limbed up to meet her, trooping down toward the yellow light pooling out of the open door of the bedroom, and swallows thickly as he turns the corner. Anna is sitting cross-legged on the floor in the midst of what is more than likely her entire wardrobe; brightly colored dresses are piled to her right, a tower of shoeboxes teeters to her left, and in the middle sits the wide-open suitcase she had used on their honeymoon to New York City. Her loose, blue blouse clings faintly to her slightly sweaty skin, and her hair is pulled back from her damp face with an old, red bandana.  
“What’s going on?” he says, taking his first tentative step toward her, and it hits him in an off angled way that this room has been theirs for just three years. It really shouldn’t feel like a lifetime already, should it?  
Anna looks up at him, wide hazel eyes turned down at the corners, mouth tugged into a sad frown, and says, simply, “I’m leaving, Castiel.”  
He grips the wooden footboard of the bed, fingers going white. “I don’t understand,” he says. “Where are you going? For how long?”  
“No, Castiel.” And even now her voice is patient, kind. “I’m leaving.”  
Of course, there’s something more to the word, as if he hadn’t already heard it the first time around. His skin flashes hot and cold and prickles with panic. He fixed this. That was the whole point of everything. Castiel had stood firm and told Dean no even when every nerve ending in his body was screaming yes because he had to do what was right even if he wasn’t sure what that was. But it’s all for naught, just like he should have guessed. Hydroplaning, that’s the best way to describe the uncontrollable, off-axis skid his life has turned into. He says nothing.  
“I just,” she begins, setting down a folded pair of jeans. “I think this is for the best.”  
“How?” he asks.  
She moves over to him, holds his face in her hands, and looks him in the eye.  
“This isn’t what I’m looking for. This isn’t what you’re looking for. I just… I want something different than what I’ve got here. I need something different.”  
“No this isn’t… This wasn’t supposed to be how this goes,” says Castiel, knowing he’s babbling. “We’re supposed to love each other and be married and make babies.”  
“It’s not enough.”  
“You mean, I’m not enough.” He knows it’s unfair. But it comes out before he can stop it.  
“No,” she says. “I love you, and I know you love me, but we’ve never done it the right way. The way we’re supposed to.”  
“I didn’t think there was a wrong way to love somebody.”  
“Castiel.” She says his name as it means goodbye. He’s an idiot and he knows it. He had thought he had something good with her, kept pushing their constant separation and drifting lives out of his head. Of course, it was his fault that he did what he did with Dean, and maybe if he’d been a stronger man, he wouldn’t have done it. But he did, and he fucked up and now he’s alone, and this is exactly what he deserves.  
“What do I do now?” he asks quietly. “Tell me what to do.”  
“I can’t,” she says, pulling away. “Nobody can.”  
When Anna goes she takes only the essentials, leaves everything else for him, as if he wants it, as if he needs the reminder that he was the one in the wrong, all these souvenirs of his failure lingering like unwelcome house guests. He asks her what to do with the rest; what to do with the rest of her clothes and her grandmother's china and, god, the furniture.  
She just smiles at him with a little shrug. "It's yours now, Castiel. It's up to you." Then she's gone, the taxi idling on the curb taking her away from him, and it's then that he truly begins to mourn her beauty and her kindness and the fact that she always really was too good for him.  
For the next week he sleeps on the sofa in a self-imposed exile, the quilt his mother made for him when he was a child tucked snug around his body. The thought of sleeping in his bed again feels like a betrayal, so he suffers through the sore necks and sleepless nights. By Friday he's arranged for a local church to come to pick up every last thing in the house except for those that he owned before Anna. When they arrive with their truck, the elderly priest who steps out from behind the wheel shakes Castiel's hand in both of his own.  
"I can't tell you enough what your generosity of spirit means to me and my parishioners," he says, a look of unabashed gratitude shining in his wide pale eyes set behind a thick pair of glasses.  
"It's no trouble, Father," he says, not bothering to mention how many times he'd flouted just about every rule that the Gospels had written down. After all, just because he seems to fail spectacularly at making good doesn't mean his furniture has to suffer the same fate.  
When he surveys what's left after the truck pulls away, he realizes that the small collection of his personal belongings doesn't amount to much. It leaves the house, which once felt full and vibrant, with chilly, open spaces and dark, echoey corners he'd rather not investigate. No more than a week later Castiel puts the house on the market and finds a small one-bedroom apartment near the waterfront. It's just big enough for his new, much smaller life, and still, he finds that it is hard to fill. In this place though, with its white walls and tall windows, space means room to breathe, a place a little freer from the suffocating loneliness.  
The photo Dean gave him remains tucked between two large books. He can’t quite bring himself to throw it away, just as he can’t quite bring himself to put it on display. He doesn’t feel like he deserves it, but there it remains, a talisman, a silent reminder. At night he likes to open the window and listen to the water of the bay lapping up against the shore in a rush and crash of citrine waves. If he squints, he can see Alcatraz. He gets a postcard from Anna not long after the move. She's having the time of her life getting lost in Rome, and he finds that he's really and truly happy for her.  
He doesn't go to work for nearly a month, cashing in on all those sick days he'd forever been too stubborn to take and his weeks of vacation unspent. It feels good, fantastic actually, to be able to relearn why he absconded here in the first place. It had been like he was a pioneer, some fresh, exciting creature finally hauling itself up from the muck. But over the years, this city that had seemed so foreign and delightful had become lost within him.  
So he walks until his legs burn and his feet ache and he can't carry on any further, and he realizes with a lurch in his stomach that he's led himself right to the door of Dean's apartment building. And he laughs. Of course, he'd come here, he thinks. Of course, this is where his body would lead him. But he's so goddamn tired, he can't even find the energy within himself to get the hell out of dodge, so he sits on the curb, leans back on his elbows, and rests, turning his face up toward the sun.  
He knows he's an idiot. He knows that he's gutless and pathetic and that he did a marvelous fucking job of making a mess of his life. Honestly, he thinks he probably deserves whatever comes his way. Castiel had never understood what home meant other than the place where you laid your head at night, or that family could mean something more than blood, and Jesus did he ever screw this one up. He and Dean may not have been anything close to normal, but that was kind of the beauty of it; they didn't really have to be. The past tense in his own head hurts articulately. Except...  
Except if he's learned anything it's that he can't just sit on his ass and wait for his life to happen to him. He's always known it deep down, and he wishes it hadn't taken him this long to remember. But, he figures, better late than never.  
Hauling himself off the curb, he goes inside, climbs up the three flights of stairs to Dean's door, and knocks. There's no answer from the other side. He knocks again, and this time he can hear the shuffling of Dean's feet on the other side. When the door opens, it shuts just as quickly back in his face.  
"Dean," he tries. "Please. I know I don't deserve it."  
"No," says Dean from the other side of the door. "You sure as shit don't."  
"Let me try?"  
There's no response. He leans in, his forehead resting against the green painted wood, sighing. "Dean, I'm sorry. I know you don't believe me, and why should you? But, just..." He takes a deep breath, shoring himself up, making sure he won't bolt again when it counts. "I... I mean, I love you. I, uh, I wanted you to know that." There's still no sound from the other side of the door, and hell he's not even sure Dean is listening anymore, and he really can’t blame him. Talk about a day late and a dollar short. But he tried. He tried and that's what's important, because what else can he do? All the same, he reaches into his pocket, pulling out a dry cleaning receipt and the nub of a pencil. Quickly he scribbles down his address and shoves the slip of paper under the door. For all, he knows it could go directly into the trash, but he has to try. He has to.  
The cab he calls doesn't take him home. Instead, he directs it to his office. The building is dark and quiet like an abandoned beehive, so Castiel is uninterrupted as he makes his way onto the elevator and up to the top floor. It only takes him ten minutes to pack up his office and throw everything into a cardboard box. The last to go is his typewriter. Before packing it away, he writes a letter, his last, and slips it under Mr. Adler's door. He supposes this is what closure feels like, and he smiles.  
It’s not a week of browsing the personal ads in the Chronicle—and of course, the irony isn’t lost on him—that he hears the shuffle of paper under his door. Hauling himself away from his kitchen table, he makes his way to the door, opens it, and sees no one outside.  
Looking down at the small square of paper, a fading “Bergman’s” at the top, he knows instantly what it is. But underneath his address, written in Dean’s scrawling letters, are a date, a time, and the name “Ruby’s Diner.”  
Sitting down on the floor, right there, Castiel laughs until his lungs hurt with it until tears are running down his face and he’s not sure he’ll ever quit or if he ever wants to.  
The diner is an easy walk from Castiel's apartment, a no-star, hole-in-the-wall place, the metallic shine of its chrome fixtures grimy from the hazy air and the window filmed over with a cataract of dust. It’s no wonder he would pick this place, Castiel thinks. It’s just ramshackle enough to have that fin-de-siècle charm that Castiel knows Dean finds comforting, but not so degraded that the health and safety board needed to get involved. The sleeve of his coat pulled over his hand—because you never know, right?—he pushes the door open to a chorus of woe begotten bells and the dull chatter of the lunch crowd.  
Dean’s easy enough to spot amongst the sticky, red, vinyl booths and mint green, tear-stained waitresses with names like Joan and Suzette, hair piled like cotton candy atop their heads. He’s leaning his face into his hand and watching the city move around outside the window. His leather jacket is pulled up around his neck and his long fingers, the ones not supporting his stubbled chin, drum a beat on the tabletop. And it’s the damnedest thing, but for some reason, seeing Dean nervous like this? It’s all Castiel needs to set his feet in motion. He barely feels himself moving, his blood is like electricity, and he thinks he might pass out from lightheadedness, but he’s come much too far to even spare the notion of turning back a passing consideration.  
Then he’s there, wing-tip shoes, rumpled hair, rain-splattered coat, and unabashed grin. He clears his throat, and Dean looks up at him, eyes going a little wider like he can’t fucking believe his own good luck like it’s too much to hope that things have finally gone his way. So Castiel sits. He wants to say, “See? I’m here. This is real. Good things do happen.” But he says none of this, just looks across the booth and says, slowly, “Hello, Dean."  
_La Fin_


End file.
